Ayodele Olofintuade’s second book Lakiriboto Chronicles is now available for your reading pleasure. The book by the Nigerian writer, journalist and feminist is published by Bookbuilders Editions Africa.
Ayodele Olofintuade made her entry into the Nigerian literary community with the publication of Eno’s Story a children’s book which was shortlisted for the Nigerian Prize for Literature 2011. Since then Olofintuade has continued with her other pursuits like editing, curating, and publishing. Her most prominent role has to be as the Managing Director of 9jafeminista a web site that shows how inequality between the sexes brings more harm than good whilst also wanting to start a sexual revolution.
Olofintuade has unveiled her newest book Lakiriboto Chronicles which is described as, “A brief history of badly behaved women’ is a story of four women and one man who tries to take control of their lives in a bid to inherit his sister’s properties. While questioning leadership as is practised generally in Nigeria today (where men are automatically conferred leadership positions without ascertaining whether they are competent or not) it also examines sensitive and important subjects which are not openly discussed like sexual assault, sexuality, and how people with mental health conditions are treated, in a Nigerian context.”
Here is the books blurb;
Murder, betrayal, revenge…a woman’s body is a crime scene.
Moremi Alagbado: Surly, gender non-conformist, the spoilt granddaughter of an indulgent old woman, sent off to become Tola’s housemaid.
Kudirat Alagbado: Loud village girl, clutching her polythene bag full of clothes, two Nancy Drew novels and dreams about a Lagos whose streets are paved with gold. Tola’s second housemaid.
Tola Roberts: a housewife suffering from multiple-personality disorder, adulterer, murderer.
Morieba Alagbado: Billionaire, lesbian, boastful, Olori Ebi’s nemesis.
Olori Ebi: (aka Raufu Alagbado, aka Raffie the Razor) cunning, generous, greedy, controlling.
Morieba, Moremi, Kudirat and Tola were victims of Alagbado clan’s long-held tradition of silence, connivance and duplicity, until Olori Ebi sets off a series of events, in an attempt to make his dead sister’s will disappear, permanently.
Below is the writer reading from the book on her YouTube.
I have read excerpts and I’m currently savouring the prose as I read the book in its entirety; I have to say that it is really really good.
You can also read an interview with the writer on Nigeria’s Daily Trust Newspaper here. From there you learn titillating information like “Lakiriboto in Yoruba means a woman who cannot be ‘mounted.’”
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